Cops are sweeping into universities like militaries and breaking up peaceful protests, all because the local governments and university admins don't like what is being said. I stated in another...
Cops are sweeping into universities like militaries and breaking up peaceful protests, all because the local governments and university admins don't like what is being said.
I stated in another topic that I felt these protests were going far too unnoticed, especially given the horrible response from police. This video ended up being a good opportunity to create a post about the issue for those unaware.
There's plenty of links for information and ways to help in the video description, but two I find particularly useful are Ceasefire Today and Operation Olive Branch.
If I knew any students who were going to a protest, I would try to talk them out of it. It seems unlikely to help anyone in Gaza (too indirect), and it's possibly dangerous. But I don't know...
If I knew any students who were going to a protest, I would try to talk them out of it. It seems unlikely to help anyone in Gaza (too indirect), and it's possibly dangerous.
But I don't know anyone and I don't think they'll listen to strangers, so I guess we will see the train wreck.
Somehow I don't think the police would listen to me either. It's not like I have any expertise in that sort of thing. Also, the police are not the only people they have to worry about: UCLA...
Somehow I don't think the police would listen to me either. It's not like I have any expertise in that sort of thing.
Also, the police are not the only people they have to worry about:
Probably not. But unless a billionaire or congressman is listening in, I don't think any of us here would be listened to very much on our own. That's why we protest. Aggregates matter. As for "why...
Probably not. But unless a billionaire or congressman is listening in, I don't think any of us here would be listened to very much on our own. That's why we protest. Aggregates matter.
As for "why not something else," what makes you think we're limited to only one option, and what makes you think only one option is being taken? Advocacy and change require multifaceted work, and more than just protests is going on here. Just as an example, the Operation Olive Branch project I linked above is doing a lot of work getting funding to Palestinian families trying to escape Gaza before they get bombed. When you want to make the world better, it's no good to idle about wondering what method is best — you pick as many as you can.
The one thing that can easily be said not to work here is counter-advocacy. Nobody ever made good change happen by discouraging others from trying to push for it.
From what I can tell, at least some of the protests are about convincing the universities to divest from companies that profit off of the current conflict in Gaza. In that case, it seems very...
From what I can tell, at least some of the protests are about convincing the universities to divest from companies that profit off of the current conflict in Gaza. In that case, it seems very reasonable to have an on-campus protest about that.
I don't see it changing what Israel does. The university sells stock, someone else buys. Maybe the price changes a little. Maybe the buyer gets a discount on the stock, so they make money instead....
I don't see it changing what Israel does. The university sells stock, someone else buys. Maybe the price changes a little. Maybe the buyer gets a discount on the stock, so they make money instead.
It doesn't seem worth going to jail over.
Economic sanctions could have a bigger effect (like with Russia and Iran), but we're pretty far away from having the worldwide consensus to do that.
In the 80s-90s at Columbia, UNC, UC Berkeley, Morehouse, and many more, divestment protests targeting apartheid were successful in getting institutions to divest from South Africa. Students built...
In the 80s-90s at Columbia, UNC, UC Berkeley, Morehouse, and many more, divestment protests targeting apartheid were successful in getting institutions to divest from South Africa. Students built "shantytowns" on campus at dozens of institutions.
The US government was allies with South Africa in a Cold War US vs. them world. Did the protests help shift that? Maybe. Congress overrode a veto to pass sanctions on SA in 86. Bush enforced the sanctions harder in 88 than Reagan cared to. Those both speak to a shift in the voters/general American public to me.
I'm not sure it matters if the protests have a larger outcome than divestment. I'm not sure it matters if nothing happens other than young adults learning to use their voices. The UAW, who has a number of members including grad students in the UC system, has come out condemning the violent response from universities and they've been calling for a ceasefire themselves.
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, put it this way in a video. (paraphrased out of a paragraph) - protesting perceived wrongs is what should be done in a college campus. And universities' missions are to teach students how to learn not tell them what to think.
I do remember the shantytowns. The connection between those protests and action by Congress is what I’m wondering about. Also, the connection between US divestment and change in government in...
I do remember the shantytowns. The connection between those protests and action by Congress is what I’m wondering about. Also, the connection between US divestment and change in government in South Africa.
It sounds like Robert Reich is taking for granted that learning to protest is good, and I don’t take that for granted. Why not learning to organize and run for office?
There's no real way to quantify that. Congress overriding a veto demonstrates a public opinion shift from SA as an ally against communism to SA as a state engaging in violent oppression of its...
There's no real way to quantify that. Congress overriding a veto demonstrates a public opinion shift from SA as an ally against communism to SA as a state engaging in violent oppression of its people. Did that opinion shift occur because of protests? Did the protests just demonstrate the shift? Did the economic sanctions really do much? I'm not sure you can quantify how much each divestment mattered, but it did demonstrate a public opinion shift. And divestment at least wouldn't have happened without those protests.
I'd argue that protest of perceived wrongs is a general good. We want people to speak up if they see things that seem wrong to them. College students can and do run for local offices in particular and generally lack the money for anything larger, but I fail to see how this isn't "organizing".
Is the intention to influence Israel directly? Perhaps, for them, knowing that they can attend a university that does not profit from military conflict is enough.
Is the intention to influence Israel directly? Perhaps, for them, knowing that they can attend a university that does not profit from military conflict is enough.
I wonder how much these students understand about the investments of whichever university they attend? Is this something they know much about, or are they hoping for a connection to dramatic...
I wonder how much these students understand about the investments of whichever university they attend? Is this something they know much about, or are they hoping for a connection to dramatic events in the news?
I don’t know anything about the connections between my investments and Israel. I do own index funds and I assume they include military contractors. Maybe there’s an ESG fund out there that avoids such things.
The thing is, military contractors also build weapons used in Ukraine, too. The manufacturer of an artillery shell doesn’t control how it’s used.
I'm not advocating for any action in particular. And actually, I should probably make the case for doing nothing. The Biden administration seems to be well aware that support for Israel is...
I'm not advocating for any action in particular. And actually, I should probably make the case for doing nothing.
The Biden administration seems to be well aware that support for Israel is unpopular with much of the Democratic base. The Biden administration is itself divided on this - there are people within the administration making arguments to stop supporting Israel (including resigning over it). Biden has shown impatience with Israel at times and seems to be pushing pretty hard. I don't know what the effect would be of pushing harder.
So, I don't feel like, from the outside, I can tell them anything that they don't already know.
Meanwhile, Congress is close to dysfunctional, and the price of urgently needed US aid to Ukraine was funding Israel. I don't like it at all, I don't think they should be tied, but... well, I'm not in favor of letting Russia win.
So, what advice should I give to my congressional representatives? I don't think they should have voted against it.
What sort of US foreign policy change would help? Hell if I know. Because I don't know what to do, I don't see a reason to push for change in any particular direction.
I'm also doubtful that the students know any more than I do. I think they're attracted to ritualized conflict because it feels like doing something. If I'm wrong about that - well, someone make a case for specific actions that's better than "we must do something, and this is something."
Student protestors are pretty universally demanding things that could actually be accomplished — their universities divesting from companies that help supply arms to Israel, or which operate in...
Student protestors are pretty universally demanding things that could actually be accomplished — their universities divesting from companies that help supply arms to Israel, or which operate in occupied Palestinian territories. This is very much within the realm of possibilty: it has been done before in the 80s in the context of South African apartheid, and done more recently for fossil fuel companies. Some universities have already begun to do so, for example Brown recently committed to a binding vote on divestment after dialogue with protestors. Sure, maybe at the end of the day this divestment will negligibly move the needle, but it's not nothing. Furthermore, such visible protests like this do a lot to a) signal to others who may quietly support the cause that they are not alone and b) also signal to Palestinians that not everyone in the US is for this war. Both of those are moral victories.
I need to read up on South Africa. I’m not sure what result outside pressure played in its history. Regarding the bit about showing others that they’re not alone: that can work both ways. You...
I need to read up on South Africa. I’m not sure what result outside pressure played in its history.
Regarding the bit about showing others that they’re not alone: that can work both ways. You could say the same thing about copycat crimes, QAnon, and all sorts of terrible memes.
For a catchy trend to be a victory, moral or otherwise, the results need to be good, and I’m not assuming that going in. (I don’t know if the Hong Kong protests or the George Floyd protests had positive results either.)
I think it's definitely a mistake to assume that just because you don't know something, other people must not know it either. Assuming that these protesters don't know more than you about this...
I think it's definitely a mistake to assume that just because you don't know something, other people must not know it either. Assuming that these protesters don't know more than you about this subject, without any other evidence besides your lack of knowledge, is an unsupported logical leap. That seems to be the basis of a lot of your conclusions. You don't know what the right thing to do is, and you don't know what these protests will accomplish, therefore they likely won't accomplish anything, and the people doing them are risking their freedom and safety for nothing. That's not a logical path.
You’re right, that doesn’t logically follow. I’m skeptical, but that doesn’t mean I’ve proven anything. I was pushing back against an opposite assumption, that the protests are a righteous cause...
You’re right, that doesn’t logically follow. I’m skeptical, but that doesn’t mean I’ve proven anything.
I was pushing back against an opposite assumption, that the protests are a righteous cause that we should support, which seems to be a default (any left-wing protest is presumed good) rather than something anyone here has made the case for. I don’t agree with that.
We haven’t been sharing news about what’s actually going on. Maybe we should get back to that (in a new topic).
If you're advocating in favor of doing literally nothing, you are standing in the way of progress. I suspect you haven't read it, so I'm going to link Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham...
I'm not advocating for any action in particular. And actually, I should probably make the case for doing nothing.
If you're advocating in favor of doing literally nothing, you are standing in the way of progress. I suspect you haven't read it, so I'm going to link Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail here. Please read it.
I've read it before. I also read a three volume biography of Martin Luther King Jr because I was interested in understanding why the Civil Rights Movement was successful. (It was a bit much, and...
I've read it before. I also read a three volume biography of Martin Luther King Jr because I was interested in understanding why the Civil Rights Movement was successful. (It was a bit much, and it was a while ago, so I only have vague impressions. Should have taken notes. I recommend the one-volume abridged version instead.)
I think reading history is sometimes useful, but it doesn't follow that every protest movement will be as successful or have the same moral standing.
You're not wrong, but you have to be extremely careful how you judge this. Getting it wrong can mean helping to sink an important and vital movement for the betterment of the world. Nevertheless,...
I think reading history is sometimes useful, but it doesn't follow that every protest movement will be as successful or have the same moral standing.
You're not wrong, but you have to be extremely careful how you judge this. Getting it wrong can mean helping to sink an important and vital movement for the betterment of the world.
Nevertheless, if MLK's words can't convince you here, I know I can't. So, agree to disagree, I suppose.
Here's the thing: Genuine, long-lasting change only comes when innocent people die. It's the only thing that drives enough public outrage to overcome the status quo. Dig into the history of almost...
Here's the thing: Genuine, long-lasting change only comes when innocent people die. It's the only thing that drives enough public outrage to overcome the status quo.
Dig into the history of almost every watershed progressive movement throughout the history of the US, and there's almost always a keystone turning-point which involves dead innocents.
Widespread watching of videos of peaceful protesters getting brutalized by police is the only way things will get better.
Conversely, this is why false-flag operations are a thing. No better way to rally the populace against an enemy country than to have your operatives stage a civilian attack in that country's name.
I don’t know what you would count as “genuine change” but I don’t believe this is true. Just off the top of my head, the Internet, solar energy, gay marriage, and legalization of marijuana are big...
I don’t know what you would count as “genuine change” but I don’t believe this is true. Just off the top of my head, the Internet, solar energy, gay marriage, and legalization of marijuana are big changes that happened that weren’t associated with outrage over deaths.
Gay marriage is part of the gay liberation movement. And it's absolutely built on the deaths of many queer people - killed when someone experienced "gay panic", killed for sport/harassment,...
Gay marriage is part of the gay liberation movement. And it's absolutely built on the deaths of many queer people - killed when someone experienced "gay panic", killed for sport/harassment, absolutely ignored by the government when seriously ill. Matthew Shepherd's murder would be the turning point for many millennials, Harvey Milk's assassination for Gen X and older perhaps.
That's just one example, inventions are not the same as a progressive social movement, but climate change advocacy does have deaths behind it too.
Vord asserted something more specific: it's not that gay people have died (yes, that's history, and it still happens) but that outrage over this is the only way that change happens. That seems...
Vord asserted something more specific: it's not that gay people have died (yes, that's history, and it still happens) but that outrage over this is the only way that change happens. That seems like a very strong and surprising claim.
I don't see a direct connection between those deaths and the court rulings and votes that allowed gay marriage. Deaths happened, and later, laws changed, but that's not enough to establish a causal connection. (And it seems like we'd have to go pretty deep into the history to establish that.)
Maybe I shouldn't have brought it up, though, since my understanding of that history is not that deep; it's just from casual newspaper reading.
even historically: women's suffrage, end of prohibition, lowering the voting age to 18, passing of ADA, establishment of EPA,FDA,OSHA. These definitely all created genuine long-lasting change, and...
even historically: women's suffrage, end of prohibition, lowering the voting age to 18, passing of ADA, establishment of EPA,FDA,OSHA. These definitely all created genuine long-lasting change, and I would argue did so in a way that align with progressive values. The deaths that caused these to happen were not of a shocking kind but of a mundane one, so aren't really similar to BLM/Vietnam war/AIDS deaths
EPA creation was due to ever-increasing public outcry starting in the 1960s. There were more than a few deaths in the relevant disasters that culminated in creation.
EPA creation was due to ever-increasing public outcry starting in the 1960s. There were more than a few deaths in the relevant disasters that culminated in creation.
I'm not talking technological progress, which is everything listed but gay marriage and pot. I'm not saying any one event causes social change, but when you look back to follow the thread of...
I'm not talking technological progress, which is everything listed but gay marriage and pot.
I'm not saying any one event causes social change, but when you look back to follow the thread of history for a change, upswells of support follow horrific injustices. I'm not the first to bring this idea up, I'm just poorly paraphrasing.
As @DefinitelyNotAFae pointed out, gay marriage in particular is just a milestone on the long, bloody path of gay acceptance. A good example of public support slowly growing is Pride parades. Pride parades are in honor of the Stonewall Riots in 1969.
Marijuana legalization has been a 'work in progress' since before I was born in the mid-80s. And you know the primary driver of support from a lot of people? Seeing people they know getting their lives ruined because they got caught with a tiny bit of weed. I can count at least 8 old Republicans off the top of my head that came around to the idea decriminalizing weed because their kid got busted for carrying.
This is changing the subject a little, broadening and weakening your original claim. I think being unhappy about people going to prison and lives ruined are good reasons to support legalization,...
This is changing the subject a little, broadening and weakening your original claim. I think being unhappy about people going to prison and lives ruined are good reasons to support legalization, but that's not about deaths anymore? Maybe there are other injustices that also serve as motivation?
Similarly, going from gay marriage to the entire gay rights movement is changing the subject a bit. When people were advocating for gay marriage (and some argued for civil unions instead), was it because people would die without it? I don't think that was a common argument?
But never mind, I like the weaker claim better. It's certainly true that new laws are often motivated by deaths, but also by other things too.
(Also, if we're talking about the broader history, I think we should add the AIDS epidemic. Plenty of innocent people did die because of that and the indifference of the Reagan administration was a major political issue.)
I do suppose i should have phrased differently, as I never fully intended to be as 'strong' as you interpret, just a bit hyperbolic and not incredibly detailed out. Although I suppose if you...
I do suppose i should have phrased differently, as I never fully intended to be as 'strong' as you interpret, just a bit hyperbolic and not incredibly detailed out.
Although I suppose if you narrowed it to within the original context of 'going to a protest where you could be arrested, injured or killed,' I'm betting its more likely to remain strong.
There weren't many police-deployed protests for marijuana legalization or gay marriage that I can recall.
I think assigning that strong of a causation to this is entirely unjustified. It may be helpful, but to say necessary is IMO too bold a claim to make. Also, there is only so much that Biden is...
I think assigning that strong of a causation to this is entirely unjustified. It may be helpful, but to say necessary is IMO too bold a claim to make. Also, there is only so much that Biden is going to do in an election year given he doesn't want to alienate moderate voters, especially as he is already now pressing the Israeli government harder than past administrations have. About 50% of US money given to israel is either for defensive weaponry or for humanitarian aid, which the US gov would be unwilling to drop, and Israel is perfectly capable of continuing the war without US support given how advanced their military industry is, and willing due to high internal support for it.
Cops are sweeping into universities like militaries and breaking up peaceful protests, all because the local governments and university admins don't like what is being said.
I stated in another topic that I felt these protests were going far too unnoticed, especially given the horrible response from police. This video ended up being a good opportunity to create a post about the issue for those unaware.
There's plenty of links for information and ways to help in the video description, but two I find particularly useful are Ceasefire Today and Operation Olive Branch.
If I knew any students who were going to a protest, I would try to talk them out of it. It seems unlikely to help anyone in Gaza (too indirect), and it's possibly dangerous.
But I don't know anyone and I don't think they'll listen to strangers, so I guess we will see the train wreck.
Inaction does not provoke change.
If you're worried about danger, I recommend pressuring the government to stop attacking them instead.
Somehow I don't think the police would listen to me either. It's not like I have any expertise in that sort of thing.
Also, the police are not the only people they have to worry about:
UCLA chancellor condemns ‘instigators’ who attacked pro-Palestinian camp on campus (The Guardian)
Regarding change, I think the politician's syllogism might apply here. Why a protest and not something else?
Probably not. But unless a billionaire or congressman is listening in, I don't think any of us here would be listened to very much on our own. That's why we protest. Aggregates matter.
As for "why not something else," what makes you think we're limited to only one option, and what makes you think only one option is being taken? Advocacy and change require multifaceted work, and more than just protests is going on here. Just as an example, the Operation Olive Branch project I linked above is doing a lot of work getting funding to Palestinian families trying to escape Gaza before they get bombed. When you want to make the world better, it's no good to idle about wondering what method is best — you pick as many as you can.
The one thing that can easily be said not to work here is counter-advocacy. Nobody ever made good change happen by discouraging others from trying to push for it.
From what I can tell, at least some of the protests are about convincing the universities to divest from companies that profit off of the current conflict in Gaza. In that case, it seems very reasonable to have an on-campus protest about that.
I don't see it changing what Israel does. The university sells stock, someone else buys. Maybe the price changes a little. Maybe the buyer gets a discount on the stock, so they make money instead.
It doesn't seem worth going to jail over.
Economic sanctions could have a bigger effect (like with Russia and Iran), but we're pretty far away from having the worldwide consensus to do that.
In the 80s-90s at Columbia, UNC, UC Berkeley, Morehouse, and many more, divestment protests targeting apartheid were successful in getting institutions to divest from South Africa. Students built "shantytowns" on campus at dozens of institutions.
The US government was allies with South Africa in a Cold War US vs. them world. Did the protests help shift that? Maybe. Congress overrode a veto to pass sanctions on SA in 86. Bush enforced the sanctions harder in 88 than Reagan cared to. Those both speak to a shift in the voters/general American public to me.
I'm not sure it matters if the protests have a larger outcome than divestment. I'm not sure it matters if nothing happens other than young adults learning to use their voices. The UAW, who has a number of members including grad students in the UC system, has come out condemning the violent response from universities and they've been calling for a ceasefire themselves.
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, put it this way in a video. (paraphrased out of a paragraph) - protesting perceived wrongs is what should be done in a college campus. And universities' missions are to teach students how to learn not tell them what to think.
I do remember the shantytowns. The connection between those protests and action by Congress is what I’m wondering about. Also, the connection between US divestment and change in government in South Africa.
It sounds like Robert Reich is taking for granted that learning to protest is good, and I don’t take that for granted. Why not learning to organize and run for office?
There's no real way to quantify that. Congress overriding a veto demonstrates a public opinion shift from SA as an ally against communism to SA as a state engaging in violent oppression of its people. Did that opinion shift occur because of protests? Did the protests just demonstrate the shift? Did the economic sanctions really do much? I'm not sure you can quantify how much each divestment mattered, but it did demonstrate a public opinion shift. And divestment at least wouldn't have happened without those protests.
I'd argue that protest of perceived wrongs is a general good. We want people to speak up if they see things that seem wrong to them. College students can and do run for local offices in particular and generally lack the money for anything larger, but I fail to see how this isn't "organizing".
This is becoming repetitive (I don’t make this assumption that protesting is good), so I guess we will just have to agree to disagree.
Is the intention to influence Israel directly? Perhaps, for them, knowing that they can attend a university that does not profit from military conflict is enough.
I wonder how much these students understand about the investments of whichever university they attend? Is this something they know much about, or are they hoping for a connection to dramatic events in the news?
I don’t know anything about the connections between my investments and Israel. I do own index funds and I assume they include military contractors. Maybe there’s an ESG fund out there that avoids such things.
The thing is, military contractors also build weapons used in Ukraine, too. The manufacturer of an artillery shell doesn’t control how it’s used.
What's the something else that you're advocating for?
I'm not advocating for any action in particular. And actually, I should probably make the case for doing nothing.
The Biden administration seems to be well aware that support for Israel is unpopular with much of the Democratic base. The Biden administration is itself divided on this - there are people within the administration making arguments to stop supporting Israel (including resigning over it). Biden has shown impatience with Israel at times and seems to be pushing pretty hard. I don't know what the effect would be of pushing harder.
So, I don't feel like, from the outside, I can tell them anything that they don't already know.
Meanwhile, Congress is close to dysfunctional, and the price of urgently needed US aid to Ukraine was funding Israel. I don't like it at all, I don't think they should be tied, but... well, I'm not in favor of letting Russia win.
So, what advice should I give to my congressional representatives? I don't think they should have voted against it.
What sort of US foreign policy change would help? Hell if I know. Because I don't know what to do, I don't see a reason to push for change in any particular direction.
I'm also doubtful that the students know any more than I do. I think they're attracted to ritualized conflict because it feels like doing something. If I'm wrong about that - well, someone make a case for specific actions that's better than "we must do something, and this is something."
Student protestors are pretty universally demanding things that could actually be accomplished — their universities divesting from companies that help supply arms to Israel, or which operate in occupied Palestinian territories. This is very much within the realm of possibilty: it has been done before in the 80s in the context of South African apartheid, and done more recently for fossil fuel companies. Some universities have already begun to do so, for example Brown recently committed to a binding vote on divestment after dialogue with protestors. Sure, maybe at the end of the day this divestment will negligibly move the needle, but it's not nothing. Furthermore, such visible protests like this do a lot to a) signal to others who may quietly support the cause that they are not alone and b) also signal to Palestinians that not everyone in the US is for this war. Both of those are moral victories.
I need to read up on South Africa. I’m not sure what result outside pressure played in its history.
Regarding the bit about showing others that they’re not alone: that can work both ways. You could say the same thing about copycat crimes, QAnon, and all sorts of terrible memes.
For a catchy trend to be a victory, moral or otherwise, the results need to be good, and I’m not assuming that going in. (I don’t know if the Hong Kong protests or the George Floyd protests had positive results either.)
I think it's definitely a mistake to assume that just because you don't know something, other people must not know it either. Assuming that these protesters don't know more than you about this subject, without any other evidence besides your lack of knowledge, is an unsupported logical leap. That seems to be the basis of a lot of your conclusions. You don't know what the right thing to do is, and you don't know what these protests will accomplish, therefore they likely won't accomplish anything, and the people doing them are risking their freedom and safety for nothing. That's not a logical path.
You’re right, that doesn’t logically follow. I’m skeptical, but that doesn’t mean I’ve proven anything.
I was pushing back against an opposite assumption, that the protests are a righteous cause that we should support, which seems to be a default (any left-wing protest is presumed good) rather than something anyone here has made the case for. I don’t agree with that.
We haven’t been sharing news about what’s actually going on. Maybe we should get back to that (in a new topic).
If you're advocating in favor of doing literally nothing, you are standing in the way of progress. I suspect you haven't read it, so I'm going to link Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail here. Please read it.
I've read it before. I also read a three volume biography of Martin Luther King Jr because I was interested in understanding why the Civil Rights Movement was successful. (It was a bit much, and it was a while ago, so I only have vague impressions. Should have taken notes. I recommend the one-volume abridged version instead.)
I think reading history is sometimes useful, but it doesn't follow that every protest movement will be as successful or have the same moral standing.
You're not wrong, but you have to be extremely careful how you judge this. Getting it wrong can mean helping to sink an important and vital movement for the betterment of the world.
Nevertheless, if MLK's words can't convince you here, I know I can't. So, agree to disagree, I suppose.
Here's the thing: Genuine, long-lasting change only comes when innocent people die. It's the only thing that drives enough public outrage to overcome the status quo.
Dig into the history of almost every watershed progressive movement throughout the history of the US, and there's almost always a keystone turning-point which involves dead innocents.
Widespread watching of videos of peaceful protesters getting brutalized by police is the only way things will get better.
Conversely, this is why false-flag operations are a thing. No better way to rally the populace against an enemy country than to have your operatives stage a civilian attack in that country's name.
I don’t know what you would count as “genuine change” but I don’t believe this is true. Just off the top of my head, the Internet, solar energy, gay marriage, and legalization of marijuana are big changes that happened that weren’t associated with outrage over deaths.
Gay marriage is part of the gay liberation movement. And it's absolutely built on the deaths of many queer people - killed when someone experienced "gay panic", killed for sport/harassment, absolutely ignored by the government when seriously ill. Matthew Shepherd's murder would be the turning point for many millennials, Harvey Milk's assassination for Gen X and older perhaps.
That's just one example, inventions are not the same as a progressive social movement, but climate change advocacy does have deaths behind it too.
Vord asserted something more specific: it's not that gay people have died (yes, that's history, and it still happens) but that outrage over this is the only way that change happens. That seems like a very strong and surprising claim.
I don't see a direct connection between those deaths and the court rulings and votes that allowed gay marriage. Deaths happened, and later, laws changed, but that's not enough to establish a causal connection. (And it seems like we'd have to go pretty deep into the history to establish that.)
Maybe I shouldn't have brought it up, though, since my understanding of that history is not that deep; it's just from casual newspaper reading.
even historically: women's suffrage, end of prohibition, lowering the voting age to 18, passing of ADA, establishment of EPA,FDA,OSHA. These definitely all created genuine long-lasting change, and I would argue did so in a way that align with progressive values. The deaths that caused these to happen were not of a shocking kind but of a mundane one, so aren't really similar to BLM/Vietnam war/AIDS deaths
EPA creation was due to ever-increasing public outcry starting in the 1960s. There were more than a few deaths in the relevant disasters that culminated in creation.
I'm not talking technological progress, which is everything listed but gay marriage and pot.
I'm not saying any one event causes social change, but when you look back to follow the thread of history for a change, upswells of support follow horrific injustices. I'm not the first to bring this idea up, I'm just poorly paraphrasing.
As @DefinitelyNotAFae pointed out, gay marriage in particular is just a milestone on the long, bloody path of gay acceptance. A good example of public support slowly growing is Pride parades. Pride parades are in honor of the Stonewall Riots in 1969.
Marijuana legalization has been a 'work in progress' since before I was born in the mid-80s. And you know the primary driver of support from a lot of people? Seeing people they know getting their lives ruined because they got caught with a tiny bit of weed. I can count at least 8 old Republicans off the top of my head that came around to the idea decriminalizing weed because their kid got busted for carrying.
Here's a small list of laws named after dead victims.
A mass poisoning is why we have the FDA
This is changing the subject a little, broadening and weakening your original claim. I think being unhappy about people going to prison and lives ruined are good reasons to support legalization, but that's not about deaths anymore? Maybe there are other injustices that also serve as motivation?
Similarly, going from gay marriage to the entire gay rights movement is changing the subject a bit. When people were advocating for gay marriage (and some argued for civil unions instead), was it because people would die without it? I don't think that was a common argument?
But never mind, I like the weaker claim better. It's certainly true that new laws are often motivated by deaths, but also by other things too.
(Also, if we're talking about the broader history, I think we should add the AIDS epidemic. Plenty of innocent people did die because of that and the indifference of the Reagan administration was a major political issue.)
I do suppose i should have phrased differently, as I never fully intended to be as 'strong' as you interpret, just a bit hyperbolic and not incredibly detailed out.
Although I suppose if you narrowed it to within the original context of 'going to a protest where you could be arrested, injured or killed,' I'm betting its more likely to remain strong.
There weren't many police-deployed protests for marijuana legalization or gay marriage that I can recall.
I think assigning that strong of a causation to this is entirely unjustified. It may be helpful, but to say necessary is IMO too bold a claim to make. Also, there is only so much that Biden is going to do in an election year given he doesn't want to alienate moderate voters, especially as he is already now pressing the Israeli government harder than past administrations have. About 50% of US money given to israel is either for defensive weaponry or for humanitarian aid, which the US gov would be unwilling to drop, and Israel is perfectly capable of continuing the war without US support given how advanced their military industry is, and willing due to high internal support for it.